"Now lets hear what you think of Apple stealing everything from Xerox. The foundation of Apple is on blatant theft. If you want to throw shit at others, make sure you are not sitting on pile of it yourself."
We need to get Myth Busters on this one. Apple was given a tour of PARC, they didn't break in and steal the secrets. They hired some of PARC's engineers over time and those engineers brought some gestating ideas with them, ideas which NEVER materialized in Xerox products at the time or even shortly thereafter. But rather than look back at fuzzy heresay long since gone, ask if Xerox filed IP suits against Apple. If Xerox didn't defend their own intellectual property against infringement, then the argument is both legally, and for all intents and purposes publicly moot. Personally, I haven't dug around to see if law suits were filed, how they were settled if they were even filed, and none of my friends from PARC have ever even mentioned "theft by Apple of IP".
Can someone with some actual facts shed some light on this ongoing, unsubstantiated, controversy?!
"...Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods. Climate can be contrasted to weather, which is the present condition of these elements and their variations over shorter periods."
I think we are in agreement that "Climate" is "Weather measured over time" - I don't recall saying anything different. Other than personal disdain for something so utterly reliant on statistical prognosis, I don't recall making any claim that Climatology does not make use of statistics - I would think that data gathered over time naturally becomes subject to statistical analysis. The point you are missing is that whether or not you are using statistical methods or empirical observations, you have to stay true to the level of accuracy of your data, in which case you cannot state decimal point precision greater than your worst piece of data. There's no credibility or integrity in conclusions drawn outside of the level of accuracy in the data collected.
"Climate science is entirely statistical."
Sure, and so is American Idol - doesn't mean I rush off and buy the music.
"it's your problem, not mine."
Is it?
"so your claim sounds a little bogus to me."
Glad you're willing to question something,... anything. In fact, however, my claim is true, but at least there's a breath of skepticism rising from your corpse. Maybe now you can apply a healthy dose to the hogwash being fed to you by mainstream media and state-run schools.
"So I was wrong, it's not millimeters per year, it's meters per year."
I'm not going to harass you about being wrong, because that's the chance you take with science, either in research or in digesting said research. I laud you for making the correction. However, I point out that the error range of 1000X is more easily avoided when you observe the convention of properly stating the least significant digit. Measurements in millimeters are beyond the resolving power of instruments that measure kilometers in the thousands. Computers can calculate with thousands of decimal places, but it's no better than processor errata if the input data didn't start with the same level of precision.
I earlier referenced Lorenz (famous for "strange attractors"). Back in the days of the Eniac, he entered some data and ran some weather prediction models. This was before flash drives, hard discs, or even tape backup, so when he finally got some more time on the main frame, he had to re-enter the data. One of his undergrad assistants did it this time, however. When he compared the resulting output, he was shocked that further into the future, the results weren't just slightly off, but were actually trending out of phase (inverted slopes). He had the data re-entered, double-checked the values, but it wasn't until he noticed that the second person entering the data took short cuts of truncating decimal places (e.g. "1.30" entered as just "1.3") that he realized that processor errata had introduced significant variances which when incorporated into ongoing calculations, created chaotic divergences. This was recognized as "high sensitivity to initial conditions". In this example, it was the understatement of precision, but it would fail both ways, giving false results for improperly encapsulated data entry.
"But, we're just talking past each other. No doubt a waste of our time.
I've never considered an honest debate a waste of time. I'm sorry you feel that way.
No, climate is the temperature, pressure, and humidity measurable to the degree of the precision of our instruments and how accurately the instrumentation can be read and results recorded. Imposing imaginary decimal point precision upon pronouncing a conclusion was never in the cards. But if you are looking for "Statistical Sciences", you want to head on over to politics and religion, or perhaps omphaloskepsis if you're the quieter type. Sorry if I sound skeptical of things commonly espoused by an intellectually handicapped media and other dogmatic institutions, but you'll get taken for a ride if you believe everything they tell you. The public has a rather short termed memory, but I still vividly remember the "bad science" of Ponns & Fleishmann, how quickly the Russians and French duplicated their results and then quietly retracted those proclamations when poor methods and misstated precision cast doubt on the "reality" of cold fusion.
"You're not going to search the individual records for that variance, you're going to use statistical methods."
And then one day you find out that the custodians for said records destroyed all of the original data, wrote programs to filter the remaining data to fit a proposed model, and in spite of emails informing their colleagues of their wholesale abandonment of empirical methods, the pre-destined conclusions were made and agenda driven sycophants and legions of the naive and bewildered cheered on an extreme agenda that was not only misplaced, but maligned at best. I'm not sure how you can find room for "science" in such flurry of activity, so it's probably moot to ask for properly stated decimal point precision other than to see it as a red flag for detecting bad "science".
But to address the larger topic, "Global Warming 'Confirmed' by Independent Study", I would have to assume that the "new" study re-collected the old data from uncompromised sources or preferably generated an entirely new set of untainted data, and upon conclusion, stated results fitting the actual data instead of the proposed model, and did so with decimal point accuracy no greater than the accuracy of the worst of the data points. This is how "scientists" earn their pedigree and engender the trust of the greater community. Once someone has blown that trust, their research is tainted and there's very little worth salvaging. It's kind of a Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker moment.
"If a study such as BEST which had two statistical scientists on its team and two known climate skeptics (Muller and Curry) is willing to express their results in fractions of a degree then I accept that they know what they are doing and the results are valid."
False assertion. I judge the results not based by who made them (other than wholesale disregarding exposed charlatans), but on the rigor of the means by which the data was gathered, the integrity of methodology by which results were synthesized, and a peer review. Prior research tainted by bad actors isn't made whole simply by a peer review, even by skeptics. Individually, I don't want to look over a million data points to draw personal conclusions about the state of the world, but upon discovery that the research is contaminated, it needs to be tossed wholesale and started again. It's like when someone pees in the pool, there's no way to sequester the urine, separating it from the good water. Rather, you drain the pool and start again. Yah, it spoils the party but at least no one ends up in the ER with urinary tract infection.
"Events like the raising of the Isthmus of Panama leave clues to their age that geologists can interpret."
Again with the omphaloskepsis.
"Cutting off the currents between the Atlantic and Pacific as the Isthmus did leads to evolutionary d
"Statistically speaking when you combine a large number of measurements it's justified to use a higher precision than the original measurements."
Statistics and anecdotes are not sound substitutes for empirical data, and if we are going to make decisions such as burning up corn as fuel or sequestering bovine flatulence, I first want some "beef" between my patties, not a bunch of hot air based on statistics. To quote d'Israeli (something frequently and falsely attributed to Clemens), there's "lies, damn lies, and statistics". Using higher precision than the original measurements is never justified in the realm of science, as the mathematician Lorenz discovered.
"For example if you had 3 measurements: 62, 63, 64 the average is 63. If instead you measure 62, 63, 65 the average is 63.33... If you limit yourself to the precision of the original measurement the average for both is 63 and you would never know that something had changed. I think even chemical engineers would accept that."
I like your example, but your conclusion is flawed. The data itself shows the variance, and a standard deviation is the way to express that. The average should not be stated as other than a whole number unless your data points were 62.0, 63.0, 64.0, in which case you could show the average as 63.3.
side note - If your objective is to show that something had changed and make a big deal out of it, I guess the time-honored convention of least significant digits would really get in the way, but at that point, we're not really talking science anymore, that would be more like freedom of religion that would allow you to get away with that.
To explain, (I don't pretend to be very good at statistical analysis, but I give you sound reason here...), what if the standard deviation of the example is +/- 0.5, then the collected data could possibly be rounded 61.5 to 62, 62.5 to 63, and 65.4 to 65, giving a true average of 63.1. However, the measurements were not stated with that level of precision, so they may have actually been 62.4 to 62, 63.4 to 63, and 65.4 to 65 which produces an average of 63.7, again, with no certainty because the measurements were made without that level of accuracy. If the two numbers were rounded, the first result would be the whole number 63, and the second, 64, a difference more significant than the accuracy of our instruments.
Worse, however, is the real life debate that "over a decade, the temperature will rise 1/10 of F". If the data was collected with accuracy of +- 0.5F, then you can see the spread in your (modified) example far exceeds the stated conclusion. If we measure 63.5F on a certain occasion, should we become alarmed at an increase of 1/10th F? It is smaller than the standard deviation, and this becomes obvious if more accurate instrumentation reveals that the average is actually 63.7 F and not 63.1 F. In this hypothetical, we're actually seeing temperatures drop. It might not fit the desired model, but that's how it would play out and a faithful scientist would allow the facts to prevail, or would refrain from faulty or premature conclusions unsupported by the data or the precision of the data. Otherwise you get Ponns & Fleishmann Redux.
"BTW, I did a little research and I was wrong about 2.5 million years. The Isthmus of Panama arose more like 3 million years ago (+/- some number). And just for the record, 3 million years isn't all that precise. An example of precise would be 2,956,210 years, a precision that isn't possible for events in prehistory.
I can't even begin to imagine the data sources by which geologists are contriving these age numbers, but if some number happens to be, say 3 x 10^6, the Isthmus of Panama may not even exist yet. Of course it, in fact, does exist, so we can li
"Should I have written "2.5 million years ago +/- 0.5 million years"? Would that have made you happy? I don't think that kind of precision is called for here."
If you are going to suggest a questionable number with certain decimal point accuracy, you should be certain that the measurements taken by which said number is derived are all equally precise. Right here, in this forum, maybe you don't have to, but I was using your assumption that something happened not 2 Million, not 3 Million, not 1 Million but 2.5 million years ago to demonstrate the sloppiness of Climate Scientology that makes outlandish decimal point claims in such things as the tides rising or coastlines receding in mm's, temperature risings in 1/10ths of C, when the PPM measurements for CO2 or the temperature measurements at diverse weather stations not only have less than a single decimal level of precision, but that precision has varied wildly over a period of 100+ years upon which data they rely.
If the 1911 thermometer was +/- 1C, then in order to use that data point, you simply can't draw conclusions with greater stated accuracy. Of course removing the data point (what the hell, the climatologists routinely ignore data points that don't fit their models, anyway) that then encumbers the High Priests of Climatology with the problem of extrapolating their results from an even more finite range which is a bad practice at best, but a conversation for another thread. The climatologists should hire themselves some hard core chemical engineers if they wanted to pronounce scientifically convincing results, but they'd likely find their models fit reality even less than the grant monies require.
Aside from the obvious political demagoguery, the hurdles causing Climatology credibility to suffer are precision, accuracy, poor and insufficient data quality, and a dependency upon wild extrapolation thereof. It may be a great political cause, but a poor occupational choice for the serious scientist or the technically inclined.
"When the Isthmus of Panama arose 2.5 million years ago..."
Are you sure it wasn't 2.6 million years ago? Maybe it was only 2.4 million years ago? The point is, like most conclusions made in the field of climate science, you lose credibility when you conclude precision in your results greater than the precision of your measurements.
"I wonder if such an enormous volume of [water] could play a role in our climate....
Nope, must be that trace gas in the air.
Don't sit there wondering, run the calculations. What is the calorimetric capacity of the oceans? What is the absorption rate of UV, the emission rate of black body radiation of the oceans? What is the same for CO2 and other atmospheric gases? I think you will find the answer to your query, Grasshopper.
"Are there any credible suspects other than "atmospheric composition" at the moment?
It can't be just the atmosphere. Whatever heat (energy in the form of specific spectral EMR) is trapped would have been blocked initially, so it's safe to conclude, if not at least hypothecate, that any warming (or cooling) is a complex of atmospheric and surface and even subterranean attributes of the planet. Blaming atmospheric CO2 is far too simplistic and inconclusive, so as to give unintended consequences if we treat it as a root cause. The jury is out and we ought not do anything, especially doing something just for the sake of doing something (a.k.a. "looking busy").
Find an alternative and come back when it's economically feasible and environmentally sound, but until then keep your hands off of my oil!... and my high volume flush toilets, and my incandescent bulbs,... and my junk!
"between two sovereign nations, and equal partnership based on mutual interest and mutual respect"
Whether it's the US and China or the US and Iraq, there is the definition equal partnership. Neither respects the US (Hell, most Americans have no respect for the US) and the feeling is mutual.
Does that mean three racks of blade servers, or three blade units into a single enclosure?
Neither, it was a typo. Should have said "Glade Servers", referring to the little room deodorizers you can plug into wall outlets. The BOFH at usajobs.gov rarely bothers to shower and combined with the heat generated from their 2 UNIVACS (on loan from the Census Bureau that no longer computes, just estimates populations) the odor makes almost the entire floor of DOL Computing Services unbearable. I would expect that with the biohazard semi-contained, some other programmers might be able to get on the VT-100s across the hall and fix some bugs. Ain't Gov-ment great!
Even the US space program, with a pretty darn good track record, still loses the occasionaly probe or shuttle.
Or the Apollo 11 telemetry tapes, and apparently the Apollo 14 lunar module. Although we can thank a woeful workplace ethics for the recovery of the Apollo 14 LM camera from one of the aging pilots with strange taste for souvenirs.
Just can't put a lid on the ad hominem, eh! Reading your response, it makes sense though, because you don't have a fact-based, logical, or substantive argument to offer as an alternative. Nonetheless, I'll respond...
first, skipping the explicatives...
"without realizing the Earth, or any orbiting body really, has an equilibrium temperature where the radiated energy equals the incoming, and doesn't simply get hotter forever."
Interesting theory from your own colon... If you've observed equilibrium temperature, then please share the data because the AGW enthusiasts are off their rocker claiming a doomsday scenario and I think your findings will give them a moment of calm until they can conjure a new man-made calamity/fundraising cause. Or, if you accept ancient ice age epics and the demonstrative lack of equilibrium in the climate since mankind began recording the temperature, please provide the causality behind this alleged equilibrium which doesn't seem to exist. Is there a new Fourth* Law of Thermodynamics regarding orbiting bodies that just hasn't made it into print yet? Please explain the cause for this alleged equilibrium.
(* There are four, but the first has the appellation of "Zeroth", so a new law might be called "the Fourth")
"You also seem to be under the impression that every climate scientist on the planet forgot the existence of the goddamned sun in their modeling, which only you managed to remember."
Neither my impressions, nor yours, nor those of UN funded climate "scientists" are substantive to the debate. If their calculations and prognosis, or their attempt to predict cause and effect are wrong, irrespective of peer review (or lack thereof as in the case of IPCC's melting glaciers in the Himalayas) and consensus, any "beliefs" are irrelevant. Cite a fact and my impression will change upon verification and synthesis, but give me rhetoric and hyperbole and you've proven nothing. In the mean time, I can only assume from their Anthropogenic theories that even if the high priests of climatology remembered that there's a sun around which we orbit, they forgot that it is through vacuous space which our orbit travels.
"Energy gets stored in chemical bonds, I'm not sure what's controversial about the statement."
I don't recall you making that statement nor myself averring that there was any controversy...? However, would you like to explain how that mitigates a net increase of energy in the Earth's system? Except for inbound meteors, the transference of energy into the planet's ecosphere is through radiation which is kinetic. It is within the (semi) closed system that said energy is converted to potential energy (chemical bonds) via chemical reactions, those processes being terrestrial. You still have a net increase equivalent to the gross amount irradiated minus that reflected or "re-emitted" through infrared or other means. There's no "flow" of heat outside of the system which would occur through some ethereal space "gases" as if the Earth were in a room shared by other bodies with which thermal equilibrium could be reached through Brownian Motion (convection).
If you can demonstrate that the energy naturally emitted is equal to (or greater than) that naturally received, you have a good argument for natural equilibrium (or natural global cooling). Do you have such data or a theory beyond your proprietary "Fourth Law of Thermodynamics" that is based on fact?
"The biosphere didn't exist in the past."
How is this relevant? What is the context with which you are referring to the existence of the "biosphere" and how does that relate to the warming or cooling (or alleged thermal "equilibrium") of the planet? Are you suggesting that the net energy of the System is held in equilibrium by the biosphere, but be
And obviously disengaged your cognitive processes which pretty much discredits the balance of your commentary. But, failing to read that to which you pretentiously respond, you go on...
"Are you under the impression that the Earth has always been continually getting hotter because its initial albedo is less than 100%?"
No, I'm convinced that the Earth has been warming because its net albedo is less than 100%. Are you under the impression that energy entering the system by way of radiation can somehow escape through anything other than radiation? Are you expecting to find Brownian Motion in space where there is virtually no matter for purpose of transmission thereby? Other than radiation and transfer through convection (Brownian Motion) or direct physical contact, are you privelaged to know of a form of transmission which has escaped discovery by the rest of science and mankind?
If you concede that the sole source of entry of energy into the Earth's system (other than the occassional meteorite, asteroid, or man-made space junk), answer this. If there is anything less than 100% reflection of inbound radiation, where does the energy that isn't reflected end up? You can fight this concept because it doesn't fit your ideological bent, but I'd be interested to hear how you deal with this very simple question.
To respond to your further inferences:
"The energy gets re-emitted to space mostly in the infrared spectrum"
So, you are saying that 100% of the energy is "re-emitted" to space? There are three discrete possibilities (and results), 100% exactly is emitted (total thermal stasis), less than 100% is "re-emitted" (global warming), or more than 100% is "re-emitted" (global cooling). Because of system complexities, there is very very little probability that exactly 100% is being "re-emitted", either upon initial entry or particularly as a net effect over time. If not, then is the net albedo greater than or less than 100%, or more to the point, is the earth cooling or warming over time? If you assert that net albedo is in excess of 100%, I'd like to know more about the material you've discovered in abundance on planet earth that has 110% reflectivity and let me be the first to congratulate you on a discovery worthy of a Nobel Prize in Physics.
But you betray your lack of understanding of laws of thermodynamics with the following:
"used to drive chemical reactions (photosynthesis, etc)."
Energy used to "drive" chemical reactions have zero net effect on the system once said energy has entered the system. The initial introduction of the energy, or the improbable exit (other than that reflected or that which we "beam" or "re-emit" into space using giant laser beams) is the only influence on the net effect. Chemical reactions only amount to internal conversion between kinetic and potential energy, with no net sum gain or loss to the greater system.
"Were the ice ages just a liberal myth too?"
Let me guess, you are a liberal? Is science just another playground for the liberal mind to which neither reason nor logic applies? Perhaps science to you is a faith-based dogma? Personally, I have no opinion on ice ages, there being insufficient evidence either way, other than regional and temporal fluctuations in climate. But I'm intrigued now that you bring it up, because ancient ice ages would strongly support the theory that the Earth has been warming since time immemorial (at least from the time it has been within the proximity of Sol).
"According to you, global average temperatures should never go down."
It's obvious you "stopped reading". You've missed the point. My thesis is that the net energy of the earth is and will continue to increase over time, so long as it is in the curr
It's true that Netflix needs to move on from DVD-by-Mail in order to remain relevant. However, they do damage to that business by expressing the self-doubt that came out loud and clear through all of this Quikster (such a stupid name!) mess. They confused their customers AND any potential suitor to buy the business unit.
But the elephant in the room isn't DVD-by-Mail or even a new distributive technology, it's the Studios who are starting to play hard ball now that their post-box-office DVD sales are in decline and BlueRay is stalling. They now look at streaming as a major distribution channel rather than a sideline revenue stream. They aren't entering into/renewing contracts that make business sense for Netflix, which is why Netflix's costs are going up while available content will diminish over time. In the end, the major Studios are getting greedy and as a result, they'll take a hit in the wallet while the viewing public will start looking to other forms of entertainment (and there are lots of them).
Back in July, when I first heard of "Quikster", it almost didn't register, it was such a stupid name. I thought it was just an internal code name and never imagined that it would be used publicly. Why would such a strong brand like Netflix use such a cheap sounding site for DVDs!? Why the need to totally spin off the DVD (physical media) business? The theory of soliciting the sale of the streaming services to Amazon (it already runs on AWS) adds some logic to that.
But the bigger picture was hidden in the many news stories of late, namely the end of the Starz contract. It will effectively cut their title lineup in half, removing not just a quantity of titles, but reducing the quality of titles available. The studios are getting greedy and the historical success of Netflix, licensing content at affordable terms, is seriously in question. Unlike Apple that could subsidize iTunes in order to ride out petty threats from Music publishers to create a ubuiquitous store front that publishers can't ignore, Netflix has no alternative stream by which it can subsidize a 3 or 4 year trade war with the studios. Under Amazon, subsidizing a long stretch of losses to generate critical mass against the studios, Netflix would have a chance, but Amazon has its own media platform and owns the network across which Netflix runs.
Thus, an AMZN buyout at today's price, even though it's nearly 1/3 of its peak, is unlikely. AMZN would be smart to just keep running its service, charging Netflix for its use of its cloud infrastructure services, and buy up NFLX when it's dropped another 50% if NFLX still has licensing rights to any significant content. When it's all over, we'll see just how powerful the content producers are over the content distributors.
"Global warming debate was so much simpler before the politicians got into it. Then it really was just scientists versus oil companies."
It was a long time ago that real scientists were silenced by the politically motivated and grant financed AGW-ists in the spirit of Lysenko. Of course, there is no debate that the earth is in fact warming by degrees over time. Whether by a reckoning of classical Newtonian physics or Quantum physics, wave theory or particle theory, we can't but deduce that a semi-closed system bombarded day and night, with less than 100% reflectivity and no alternative means of transmission or radiation, must increase it's energy level, i.e. increase in heat. This is high school physics, but remains supported by even the most advanced theories. Energy and matter must be conserved and accounted for, and the net energy that we absorb is that which we receive by radiation from the sun minus that which we reflect.
The debate is thus reduced to whether additional topical warming of any significance is caused by human activities. To date, I've seen no compelling proof, statistical or otherwise, that CO2 is the cause of such. Statistically, it is a trailing indicator (i.e. the "effect" and not the "cause") by Al Gore's own charts (not that I would for a moment consider him a "man of science" nor give much credence to his charts). Empirically, I know of no conclusive study that shows CO2 blocking outbound radiation of spectral heat that wouldn't also be blocked on the inbound (i.e. the same EMR that would be "trapped" by CO2 would be reflected by CO2 in the first place). These are simple concepts that have already been worked out on paper and proven numerous times in cross disciplinary experiments.
If mankind causes topical warming, what is the cost? Where is it occurring? Electric cars (brahahaha, don't get me going on the massive stupidity and NIMBY pollution created by mining Li+ for use in batteries charged through the lossy transmission of coal and gas generated electricity) and solar panels (dark planks which for every square foot negates any net reduction of global warming by absorbing that which would otherwise, at least in portion, be reflected back into space) are faux solutions if we can honestly conclude that topical warming (the troposphere above cities, any trapping of heat through combined spectral shifts of the reflective light and emission gases, nuclear power plants converting matter to kinetic energy though arguably the same radioactive materials would be emitting radiation at a comparable rate in nature) has any lasting or spreading damage associated with it. Can we quantitatively demonstrate that human activities damage the ecosystem faster than the ecosystem absorbs said influence and "heals itself"? How do we know that our modified behavior has the desired outcome and not some unintended consequence?
"the discovery of the gigantic and prolific Bakken oil fields of Montana and North Dakota"
These oil deposits were discovered almost 20 years ago and appeared in US Geological Services reports to the public in 2006, before even the last election. They have been strangely ignored over the last 5 years, even by politicians who might have benefited by their public discussion (yah, yah, McCain wasn't well read nor really genuinely good at anything except flying fighter jets, but no disrespect to a man who gave more than his life for his country).
Final question - noting that nothing in a finite sphere is "infinite" so dispensing with the politically rich hyperbole of "finite", perhaps using "limited" instead - why is it assumed that oil is "limited" in its availability?! Why do we assume a large time span for the chemical synthesis of fossil fuels under the immense pressure of the ocean or under the immense temperature below the crust, when we can produce sweet crude ourselves in a matter of a weeks simply using daylight, tap water, and some algae (referring to Sapphir
The beauty of running the experiment after the first guy is that if you can get the neutrinos going fast enough, you can actually finish your experiment before the first guy even launched his, so you could post your results yesterday.
Slashdot Mirror
"Now lets hear what you think of Apple stealing everything from Xerox. The foundation of Apple is on blatant theft. If you want to throw shit at others, make sure you are not sitting on pile of it yourself."
We need to get Myth Busters on this one. Apple was given a tour of PARC, they didn't break in and steal the secrets. They hired some of PARC's engineers over time and those engineers brought some gestating ideas with them, ideas which NEVER materialized in Xerox products at the time or even shortly thereafter. But rather than look back at fuzzy heresay long since gone, ask if Xerox filed IP suits against Apple. If Xerox didn't defend their own intellectual property against infringement, then the argument is both legally, and for all intents and purposes publicly moot. Personally, I haven't dug around to see if law suits were filed, how they were settled if they were even filed, and none of my friends from PARC have ever even mentioned "theft by Apple of IP".
Can someone with some actual facts shed some light on this ongoing, unsubstantiated, controversy?!
"...Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods. Climate can be contrasted to weather, which is the present condition of these elements and their variations over shorter periods."
I think we are in agreement that "Climate" is "Weather measured over time" - I don't recall saying anything different. Other than personal disdain for something so utterly reliant on statistical prognosis, I don't recall making any claim that Climatology does not make use of statistics - I would think that data gathered over time naturally becomes subject to statistical analysis. The point you are missing is that whether or not you are using statistical methods or empirical observations, you have to stay true to the level of accuracy of your data, in which case you cannot state decimal point precision greater than your worst piece of data. There's no credibility or integrity in conclusions drawn outside of the level of accuracy in the data collected.
"Climate science is entirely statistical."
Sure, and so is American Idol - doesn't mean I rush off and buy the music.
"it's your problem, not mine."
Is it?
"so your claim sounds a little bogus to me."
Glad you're willing to question something,... anything. In fact, however, my claim is true, but at least there's a breath of skepticism rising from your corpse. Maybe now you can apply a healthy dose to the hogwash being fed to you by mainstream media and state-run schools.
"So I was wrong, it's not millimeters per year, it's meters per year."
I'm not going to harass you about being wrong, because that's the chance you take with science, either in research or in digesting said research. I laud you for making the correction. However, I point out that the error range of 1000X is more easily avoided when you observe the convention of properly stating the least significant digit. Measurements in millimeters are beyond the resolving power of instruments that measure kilometers in the thousands. Computers can calculate with thousands of decimal places, but it's no better than processor errata if the input data didn't start with the same level of precision.
I earlier referenced Lorenz (famous for "strange attractors"). Back in the days of the Eniac, he entered some data and ran some weather prediction models. This was before flash drives, hard discs, or even tape backup, so when he finally got some more time on the main frame, he had to re-enter the data. One of his undergrad assistants did it this time, however. When he compared the resulting output, he was shocked that further into the future, the results weren't just slightly off, but were actually trending out of phase (inverted slopes). He had the data re-entered, double-checked the values, but it wasn't until he noticed that the second person entering the data took short cuts of truncating decimal places (e.g. "1.30" entered as just "1.3") that he realized that processor errata had introduced significant variances which when incorporated into ongoing calculations, created chaotic divergences. This was recognized as "high sensitivity to initial conditions". In this example, it was the understatement of precision, but it would fail both ways, giving false results for improperly encapsulated data entry.
"But, we're just talking past each other. No doubt a waste of our time.
I've never considered an honest debate a waste of time. I'm sorry you feel that way.
"Climate is a statistical science."
No, climate is the temperature, pressure, and humidity measurable to the degree of the precision of our instruments and how accurately the instrumentation can be read and results recorded. Imposing imaginary decimal point precision upon pronouncing a conclusion was never in the cards. But if you are looking for "Statistical Sciences", you want to head on over to politics and religion, or perhaps omphaloskepsis if you're the quieter type. Sorry if I sound skeptical of things commonly espoused by an intellectually handicapped media and other dogmatic institutions, but you'll get taken for a ride if you believe everything they tell you. The public has a rather short termed memory, but I still vividly remember the "bad science" of Ponns & Fleishmann, how quickly the Russians and French duplicated their results and then quietly retracted those proclamations when poor methods and misstated precision cast doubt on the "reality" of cold fusion.
"You're not going to search the individual records for that variance, you're going to use statistical methods."
And then one day you find out that the custodians for said records destroyed all of the original data, wrote programs to filter the remaining data to fit a proposed model, and in spite of emails informing their colleagues of their wholesale abandonment of empirical methods, the pre-destined conclusions were made and agenda driven sycophants and legions of the naive and bewildered cheered on an extreme agenda that was not only misplaced, but maligned at best. I'm not sure how you can find room for "science" in such flurry of activity, so it's probably moot to ask for properly stated decimal point precision other than to see it as a red flag for detecting bad "science".
But to address the larger topic, "Global Warming 'Confirmed' by Independent Study", I would have to assume that the "new" study re-collected the old data from uncompromised sources or preferably generated an entirely new set of untainted data, and upon conclusion, stated results fitting the actual data instead of the proposed model, and did so with decimal point accuracy no greater than the accuracy of the worst of the data points. This is how "scientists" earn their pedigree and engender the trust of the greater community. Once someone has blown that trust, their research is tainted and there's very little worth salvaging. It's kind of a Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker moment.
"If a study such as BEST which had two statistical scientists on its team and two known climate skeptics (Muller and Curry) is willing to express their results in fractions of a degree then I accept that they know what they are doing and the results are valid."
False assertion. I judge the results not based by who made them (other than wholesale disregarding exposed charlatans), but on the rigor of the means by which the data was gathered, the integrity of methodology by which results were synthesized, and a peer review. Prior research tainted by bad actors isn't made whole simply by a peer review, even by skeptics. Individually, I don't want to look over a million data points to draw personal conclusions about the state of the world, but upon discovery that the research is contaminated, it needs to be tossed wholesale and started again. It's like when someone pees in the pool, there's no way to sequester the urine, separating it from the good water. Rather, you drain the pool and start again. Yah, it spoils the party but at least no one ends up in the ER with urinary tract infection.
"Events like the raising of the Isthmus of Panama leave clues to their age that geologists can interpret."
Again with the omphaloskepsis.
"Cutting off the currents between the Atlantic and Pacific as the Isthmus did leads to evolutionary d
"Statistically speaking when you combine a large number of measurements it's justified to use a higher precision than the original measurements."
Statistics and anecdotes are not sound substitutes for empirical data, and if we are going to make decisions such as burning up corn as fuel or sequestering bovine flatulence, I first want some "beef" between my patties, not a bunch of hot air based on statistics. To quote d'Israeli (something frequently and falsely attributed to Clemens), there's "lies, damn lies, and statistics". Using higher precision than the original measurements is never justified in the realm of science, as the mathematician Lorenz discovered.
"For example if you had 3 measurements: 62, 63, 64 the average is 63. If instead you measure 62, 63, 65 the average is 63.33... If you limit yourself to the precision of the original measurement the average for both is 63 and you would never know that something had changed. I think even chemical engineers would accept that."
I like your example, but your conclusion is flawed. The data itself shows the variance, and a standard deviation is the way to express that. The average should not be stated as other than a whole number unless your data points were 62.0, 63.0, 64.0, in which case you could show the average as 63.3.
side note - If your objective is to show that something had changed and make a big deal out of it, I guess the time-honored convention of least significant digits would really get in the way, but at that point, we're not really talking science anymore, that would be more like freedom of religion that would allow you to get away with that.
To explain, (I don't pretend to be very good at statistical analysis, but I give you sound reason here...), what if the standard deviation of the example is +/- 0.5, then the collected data could possibly be rounded 61.5 to 62, 62.5 to 63, and 65.4 to 65, giving a true average of 63.1. However, the measurements were not stated with that level of precision, so they may have actually been 62.4 to 62, 63.4 to 63, and 65.4 to 65 which produces an average of 63.7, again, with no certainty because the measurements were made without that level of accuracy. If the two numbers were rounded, the first result would be the whole number 63, and the second, 64, a difference more significant than the accuracy of our instruments.
Worse, however, is the real life debate that "over a decade, the temperature will rise 1/10 of F". If the data was collected with accuracy of +- 0.5F, then you can see the spread in your (modified) example far exceeds the stated conclusion. If we measure 63.5F on a certain occasion, should we become alarmed at an increase of 1/10th F? It is smaller than the standard deviation, and this becomes obvious if more accurate instrumentation reveals that the average is actually 63.7 F and not 63.1 F. In this hypothetical, we're actually seeing temperatures drop. It might not fit the desired model, but that's how it would play out and a faithful scientist would allow the facts to prevail, or would refrain from faulty or premature conclusions unsupported by the data or the precision of the data. Otherwise you get Ponns & Fleishmann Redux.
"BTW, I did a little research and I was wrong about 2.5 million years. The Isthmus of Panama arose more like 3 million years ago (+/- some number). And just for the record, 3 million years isn't all that precise. An example of precise would be 2,956,210 years, a precision that isn't possible for events in prehistory.
I can't even begin to imagine the data sources by which geologists are contriving these age numbers, but if some number happens to be, say 3 x 10^6, the Isthmus of Panama may not even exist yet. Of course it, in fact, does exist, so we can li
"Should I have written "2.5 million years ago +/- 0.5 million years"? Would that have made you happy? I don't think that kind of precision is called for here."
If you are going to suggest a questionable number with certain decimal point accuracy, you should be certain that the measurements taken by which said number is derived are all equally precise. Right here, in this forum, maybe you don't have to, but I was using your assumption that something happened not 2 Million, not 3 Million, not 1 Million but 2.5 million years ago to demonstrate the sloppiness of Climate Scientology that makes outlandish decimal point claims in such things as the tides rising or coastlines receding in mm's, temperature risings in 1/10ths of C, when the PPM measurements for CO2 or the temperature measurements at diverse weather stations not only have less than a single decimal level of precision, but that precision has varied wildly over a period of 100+ years upon which data they rely.
If the 1911 thermometer was +/- 1C, then in order to use that data point, you simply can't draw conclusions with greater stated accuracy. Of course removing the data point (what the hell, the climatologists routinely ignore data points that don't fit their models, anyway) that then encumbers the High Priests of Climatology with the problem of extrapolating their results from an even more finite range which is a bad practice at best, but a conversation for another thread. The climatologists should hire themselves some hard core chemical engineers if they wanted to pronounce scientifically convincing results, but they'd likely find their models fit reality even less than the grant monies require.
Aside from the obvious political demagoguery, the hurdles causing Climatology credibility to suffer are precision, accuracy, poor and insufficient data quality, and a dependency upon wild extrapolation thereof. It may be a great political cause, but a poor occupational choice for the serious scientist or the technically inclined.
"When the Isthmus of Panama arose 2.5 million years ago..."
Are you sure it wasn't 2.6 million years ago? Maybe it was only 2.4 million years ago? The point is, like most conclusions made in the field of climate science, you lose credibility when you conclude precision in your results greater than the precision of your measurements.
"I wonder if such an enormous volume of [water] could play a role in our climate....
Nope, must be that trace gas in the air.
Don't sit there wondering, run the calculations. What is the calorimetric capacity of the oceans? What is the absorption rate of UV, the emission rate of black body radiation of the oceans? What is the same for CO2 and other atmospheric gases? I think you will find the answer to your query, Grasshopper.
"Are there any credible suspects other than "atmospheric composition" at the moment?
It can't be just the atmosphere. Whatever heat (energy in the form of specific spectral EMR) is trapped would have been blocked initially, so it's safe to conclude, if not at least hypothecate, that any warming (or cooling) is a complex of atmospheric and surface and even subterranean attributes of the planet. Blaming atmospheric CO2 is far too simplistic and inconclusive, so as to give unintended consequences if we treat it as a root cause. The jury is out and we ought not do anything, especially doing something just for the sake of doing something (a.k.a. "looking busy").
"stop burning fossil fuels."
Find an alternative and come back when it's economically feasible and environmentally sound, but until then keep your hands off of my oil! ... and my high volume flush toilets, and my incandescent bulbs,... and my junk!
"will have to rely on information coming from climate science... and pretty much the entire Republican party, have decided is incompetent or corrupt.
Climate "Science", so glad there's no political undertones... and that it's kept safe under the guidance of Democrats.
RepubliGOON or DemocRAT, only an idiot would tie up his identity with others simply because of a letter in parentheses.
"between two sovereign nations, and equal partnership based on mutual interest and mutual respect"
Whether it's the US and China or the US and Iraq, there is the definition equal partnership. Neither respects the US (Hell, most Americans have no respect for the US) and the feeling is mutual.
Does that mean three racks of blade servers, or three blade units into a single enclosure?
Neither, it was a typo. Should have said "Glade Servers", referring to the little room deodorizers you can plug into wall outlets. The BOFH at usajobs.gov rarely bothers to shower and combined with the heat generated from their 2 UNIVACS (on loan from the Census Bureau that no longer computes, just estimates populations) the odor makes almost the entire floor of DOL Computing Services unbearable. I would expect that with the biohazard semi-contained, some other programmers might be able to get on the VT-100s across the hall and fix some bugs. Ain't Gov-ment great!
Even the US space program, with a pretty darn good track record, still loses the occasionaly probe or shuttle.
Or the Apollo 11 telemetry tapes, and apparently the Apollo 14 lunar module. Although we can thank a woeful workplace ethics for the recovery of the Apollo 14 LM camera from one of the aging pilots with strange taste for souvenirs.
I don't know whether Khameini has actually been sidelined
I must have misread the article,... are you saying they tried to put two monkeys into orbit?
Ahmadinejad is a puppet of the Republican Guard... Ahmadinejad is simply the side-show, to give bombastic speeches, photo-ops, etc.
... and apparently their best candidate for sub-orbital test flights.
But....still too slow to beat Jay Leno - who told the joke first. Lame
This is a case of a headline with a singular punch line trajectory.
do you really think that the US federal government is competent enough to collectivly keep that a secret?
They can put a man on the moon but can't succeed in perpetuating a lie? Well, that really helps restore my faith in Social Security, thanks!
"The conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day with this one..."
What's the big deal!? Some actor carrying a prop off of a sound stage, they do it in Hollywood all the time!
"Which is why I say you're an idiot"
Just can't put a lid on the ad hominem, eh! Reading your response, it makes sense though, because you don't have a fact-based, logical, or substantive argument to offer as an alternative. Nonetheless, I'll respond...
first, skipping the explicatives...
"without realizing the Earth, or any orbiting body really, has an equilibrium temperature where the radiated energy equals the incoming, and doesn't simply get hotter forever."
Interesting theory from your own colon... If you've observed equilibrium temperature, then please share the data because the AGW enthusiasts are off their rocker claiming a doomsday scenario and I think your findings will give them a moment of calm until they can conjure a new man-made calamity/fundraising cause. Or, if you accept ancient ice age epics and the demonstrative lack of equilibrium in the climate since mankind began recording the temperature, please provide the causality behind this alleged equilibrium which doesn't seem to exist. Is there a new Fourth* Law of Thermodynamics regarding orbiting bodies that just hasn't made it into print yet? Please explain the cause for this alleged equilibrium.
(* There are four, but the first has the appellation of "Zeroth", so a new law might be called "the Fourth")
"You also seem to be under the impression that every climate scientist on the planet forgot the existence of the goddamned sun in their modeling, which only you managed to remember."
Neither my impressions, nor yours, nor those of UN funded climate "scientists" are substantive to the debate. If their calculations and prognosis, or their attempt to predict cause and effect are wrong, irrespective of peer review (or lack thereof as in the case of IPCC's melting glaciers in the Himalayas) and consensus, any "beliefs" are irrelevant. Cite a fact and my impression will change upon verification and synthesis, but give me rhetoric and hyperbole and you've proven nothing. In the mean time, I can only assume from their Anthropogenic theories that even if the high priests of climatology remembered that there's a sun around which we orbit, they forgot that it is through vacuous space which our orbit travels.
"Energy gets stored in chemical bonds, I'm not sure what's controversial about the statement."
I don't recall you making that statement nor myself averring that there was any controversy...? However, would you like to explain how that mitigates a net increase of energy in the Earth's system? Except for inbound meteors, the transference of energy into the planet's ecosphere is through radiation which is kinetic. It is within the (semi) closed system that said energy is converted to potential energy (chemical bonds) via chemical reactions, those processes being terrestrial. You still have a net increase equivalent to the gross amount irradiated minus that reflected or "re-emitted" through infrared or other means. There's no "flow" of heat outside of the system which would occur through some ethereal space "gases" as if the Earth were in a room shared by other bodies with which thermal equilibrium could be reached through Brownian Motion (convection).
If you can demonstrate that the energy naturally emitted is equal to (or greater than) that naturally received, you have a good argument for natural equilibrium (or natural global cooling). Do you have such data or a theory beyond your proprietary "Fourth Law of Thermodynamics" that is based on fact?
"The biosphere didn't exist in the past."
How is this relevant? What is the context with which you are referring to the existence of the "biosphere" and how does that relate to the warming or cooling (or alleged thermal "equilibrium") of the planet? Are you suggesting that the net energy of the System is held in equilibrium by the biosphere, but be
"I stopped reading here."
And obviously disengaged your cognitive processes which pretty much discredits the balance of your commentary. But, failing to read that to which you pretentiously respond, you go on...
"Are you under the impression that the Earth has always been continually getting hotter because its initial albedo is less than 100%?"
No, I'm convinced that the Earth has been warming because its net albedo is less than 100%. Are you under the impression that energy entering the system by way of radiation can somehow escape through anything other than radiation? Are you expecting to find Brownian Motion in space where there is virtually no matter for purpose of transmission thereby? Other than radiation and transfer through convection (Brownian Motion) or direct physical contact, are you privelaged to know of a form of transmission which has escaped discovery by the rest of science and mankind?
If you concede that the sole source of entry of energy into the Earth's system (other than the occassional meteorite, asteroid, or man-made space junk), answer this. If there is anything less than 100% reflection of inbound radiation, where does the energy that isn't reflected end up? You can fight this concept because it doesn't fit your ideological bent, but I'd be interested to hear how you deal with this very simple question.
To respond to your further inferences:
"The energy gets re-emitted to space mostly in the infrared spectrum"
So, you are saying that 100% of the energy is "re-emitted" to space? There are three discrete possibilities (and results), 100% exactly is emitted (total thermal stasis), less than 100% is "re-emitted" (global warming), or more than 100% is "re-emitted" (global cooling). Because of system complexities, there is very very little probability that exactly 100% is being "re-emitted", either upon initial entry or particularly as a net effect over time. If not, then is the net albedo greater than or less than 100%, or more to the point, is the earth cooling or warming over time? If you assert that net albedo is in excess of 100%, I'd like to know more about the material you've discovered in abundance on planet earth that has 110% reflectivity and let me be the first to congratulate you on a discovery worthy of a Nobel Prize in Physics.
But you betray your lack of understanding of laws of thermodynamics with the following:
"used to drive chemical reactions (photosynthesis, etc)."
Energy used to "drive" chemical reactions have zero net effect on the system once said energy has entered the system. The initial introduction of the energy, or the improbable exit (other than that reflected or that which we "beam" or "re-emit" into space using giant laser beams) is the only influence on the net effect. Chemical reactions only amount to internal conversion between kinetic and potential energy, with no net sum gain or loss to the greater system.
"Were the ice ages just a liberal myth too?"
Let me guess, you are a liberal? Is science just another playground for the liberal mind to which neither reason nor logic applies? Perhaps science to you is a faith-based dogma? Personally, I have no opinion on ice ages, there being insufficient evidence either way, other than regional and temporal fluctuations in climate. But I'm intrigued now that you bring it up, because ancient ice ages would strongly support the theory that the Earth has been warming since time immemorial (at least from the time it has been within the proximity of Sol).
"According to you, global average temperatures should never go down."
It's obvious you "stopped reading". You've missed the point. My thesis is that the net energy of the earth is and will continue to increase over time, so long as it is in the curr
Good analysis, many salient points.
It's true that Netflix needs to move on from DVD-by-Mail in order to remain relevant. However, they do damage to that business by expressing the self-doubt that came out loud and clear through all of this Quikster (such a stupid name!) mess. They confused their customers AND any potential suitor to buy the business unit.
But the elephant in the room isn't DVD-by-Mail or even a new distributive technology, it's the Studios who are starting to play hard ball now that their post-box-office DVD sales are in decline and BlueRay is stalling. They now look at streaming as a major distribution channel rather than a sideline revenue stream. They aren't entering into/renewing contracts that make business sense for Netflix, which is why Netflix's costs are going up while available content will diminish over time. In the end, the major Studios are getting greedy and as a result, they'll take a hit in the wallet while the viewing public will start looking to other forms of entertainment (and there are lots of them).
Back in July, when I first heard of "Quikster", it almost didn't register, it was such a stupid name. I thought it was just an internal code name and never imagined that it would be used publicly. Why would such a strong brand like Netflix use such a cheap sounding site for DVDs!? Why the need to totally spin off the DVD (physical media) business? The theory of soliciting the sale of the streaming services to Amazon (it already runs on AWS) adds some logic to that.
But the bigger picture was hidden in the many news stories of late, namely the end of the Starz contract. It will effectively cut their title lineup in half, removing not just a quantity of titles, but reducing the quality of titles available. The studios are getting greedy and the historical success of Netflix, licensing content at affordable terms, is seriously in question. Unlike Apple that could subsidize iTunes in order to ride out petty threats from Music publishers to create a ubuiquitous store front that publishers can't ignore, Netflix has no alternative stream by which it can subsidize a 3 or 4 year trade war with the studios. Under Amazon, subsidizing a long stretch of losses to generate critical mass against the studios, Netflix would have a chance, but Amazon has its own media platform and owns the network across which Netflix runs.
Thus, an AMZN buyout at today's price, even though it's nearly 1/3 of its peak, is unlikely. AMZN would be smart to just keep running its service, charging Netflix for its use of its cloud infrastructure services, and buy up NFLX when it's dropped another 50% if NFLX still has licensing rights to any significant content. When it's all over, we'll see just how powerful the content producers are over the content distributors.
"Global warming debate was so much simpler before the politicians got into it. Then it really was just scientists versus oil companies."
It was a long time ago that real scientists were silenced by the politically motivated and grant financed AGW-ists in the spirit of Lysenko. Of course, there is no debate that the earth is in fact warming by degrees over time. Whether by a reckoning of classical Newtonian physics or Quantum physics, wave theory or particle theory, we can't but deduce that a semi-closed system bombarded day and night, with less than 100% reflectivity and no alternative means of transmission or radiation, must increase it's energy level, i.e. increase in heat. This is high school physics, but remains supported by even the most advanced theories. Energy and matter must be conserved and accounted for, and the net energy that we absorb is that which we receive by radiation from the sun minus that which we reflect.
The debate is thus reduced to whether additional topical warming of any significance is caused by human activities. To date, I've seen no compelling proof, statistical or otherwise, that CO2 is the cause of such. Statistically, it is a trailing indicator (i.e. the "effect" and not the "cause") by Al Gore's own charts (not that I would for a moment consider him a "man of science" nor give much credence to his charts). Empirically, I know of no conclusive study that shows CO2 blocking outbound radiation of spectral heat that wouldn't also be blocked on the inbound (i.e. the same EMR that would be "trapped" by CO2 would be reflected by CO2 in the first place). These are simple concepts that have already been worked out on paper and proven numerous times in cross disciplinary experiments.
If mankind causes topical warming, what is the cost? Where is it occurring? Electric cars (brahahaha, don't get me going on the massive stupidity and NIMBY pollution created by mining Li+ for use in batteries charged through the lossy transmission of coal and gas generated electricity) and solar panels (dark planks which for every square foot negates any net reduction of global warming by absorbing that which would otherwise, at least in portion, be reflected back into space) are faux solutions if we can honestly conclude that topical warming (the troposphere above cities, any trapping of heat through combined spectral shifts of the reflective light and emission gases, nuclear power plants converting matter to kinetic energy though arguably the same radioactive materials would be emitting radiation at a comparable rate in nature) has any lasting or spreading damage associated with it. Can we quantitatively demonstrate that human activities damage the ecosystem faster than the ecosystem absorbs said influence and "heals itself"? How do we know that our modified behavior has the desired outcome and not some unintended consequence?
"the discovery of the gigantic and prolific Bakken oil fields of Montana and North Dakota"
These oil deposits were discovered almost 20 years ago and appeared in US Geological Services reports to the public in 2006, before even the last election. They have been strangely ignored over the last 5 years, even by politicians who might have benefited by their public discussion (yah, yah, McCain wasn't well read nor really genuinely good at anything except flying fighter jets, but no disrespect to a man who gave more than his life for his country).
Final question - noting that nothing in a finite sphere is "infinite" so dispensing with the politically rich hyperbole of "finite", perhaps using "limited" instead - why is it assumed that oil is "limited" in its availability?! Why do we assume a large time span for the chemical synthesis of fossil fuels under the immense pressure of the ocean or under the immense temperature below the crust, when we can produce sweet crude ourselves in a matter of a weeks simply using daylight, tap water, and some algae (referring to Sapphir
"And I posted it tomorrow"
The beauty of running the experiment after the first guy is that if you can get the neutrinos going fast enough, you can actually finish your experiment before the first guy even launched his, so you could post your results yesterday.
Does anyone remember the Quantum hard drive company? What was in them hard drives?